So this guy Jeff Gannon shows up at the White House and wants press credentials so that he can attend the President's press conference. But his real name isn't Jeff Gannon, and
he isn't really a reporter, although he's been playing one on the internet for a few months. His experience as a journalist seems to consist of posting slightly reworded Republican press releases on the website of
Talon News, which is a conservative news outlet that hardly anyone has heard of (and which is also a barely disguised front organization for Republican activists). Oh, and this Gannon character also claims to be a born-again, bible-thumping, red-necked conservative, but he also seems to be connected to the gay porn industry. So what does the White House do when this guy approaches them? Well, they immediately give him press credentials, of course, and allow him to attend the president's Jan. 26 press conference, during which the president actually calls on him and Gannon proceeds to ask a strange, kiss-ass question about how it's possible for republicans to work with democrats since democrats are so 'divorced from reality'. I can only see one possibility--that Gannon was a republican shill. A fake reporter planted in the audience in order to ask softball questions. Very strange. But Gannon himself sounds like such an unusual and contradictory character that you have to wonder if he was simply the pawn in some kind of
Manchurian Candidate type of situation... a struggling gay porn actor brainwashed and transformed into an ultra-conservative republican white house reporter.
Comments
I found that talks more about it. (You have to erase the '%5B/url' that appears at the end for some reason. Alex, you should look into this, it's corrupting my link!)
Didn't this guy have a part to play in the Valerie Plame case. I think I read in the Washington Post awhile back, that Gannon had been supoenaed by Amassador Joe Wilson in the civil investigation of the "outting" of his CIA agent wife. If so, the plot thickens...
CCC
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/usnw/20050211/pl_usnw/some__jeff_gannon__highlights_____no_longer_available_on_the_talon_news_website171_xml
Hmmm... don't know what it is, but there's something fishy about those stories!
If a democratic administration did this I'd be just as cynical about it, but we happen to have a republican administration in power right now.
http://www.nydailynews.com/02-10-2005/news/gossip/story/279466p-239417c.html
How exactly does a fake reporter get access to internal CIA documents when the rest of the media is shut out of the loop? How did he get press credentials with a pseudonym? How is it that this same fake reporter is called upon by the president himself in a press conference?
For all I know, the CIA documents about Plame may be a hoax themselves perpetrated by this Guckert character. That makes his story even more interesting.
"If Fedupwithlefties can show me even one example of the mainstream news media (really mainstream, like a big daily newspaper, major wire service, or big TV network) planting a left-wing shill in a Presidential news conference (in this context, "shill" means a political activist who isn't really anybody other journalists would consider to be a journalist), I'll eat my shirt, and his (hers?) too."
Right behind you, Gary. I've got some wardrobe I'd be willing to masticate as well.
I'm greatly amused by the sight of right-wingers being put in the position of having to defend a "reporter" with NO journalistic credentials who ran porn sites and who attended presidential press conferences under an assumed identity. Tough position there, especially for "family values" people, wouldn't you say?
As for reporters from the "mainstream media" asking tough questions of the president and his flack, boo friggin' hoo. That's their job! There IS a difference between asking questions that a press secretary may not be comfortable with and "bias."
This "Gannon" asshole was a fake from start to finish. Why are you defending him? Just because he called himself "conservative?" Is that an automatic "Get Out Of Jail Free" card?
If and when we find out that he was a cyber-pimp for sure, will that "conservative" thing continue to buy him slack? Where's your values now? Fake is fake. Mentioning something real or imagined that someone from the left may have done doesn't get him off the hook. All that is is an elaborate way of saying "Two wrongs make a right." That ain't in any Bible *I've* ever seen.
1) After dabbling in homoerotic cybersex, Guckert assumes the pseudonym Gannon.
2)Gannon/Guckert attends a single journalism seminar at a neocon think tank called The Leadership Institute, over the course of one weekend.
3)He fails to get clearance for a congressional press pass but manage to obtain a press pass issued daily by the White house press office.
4)There, Gannon/Guckert occupies his time re-releasing GOP talking points as if it were news.
5)Then somehow Gannon/Guckert gets slipped a classified CIA memo, which identifies Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.
6)And this information mysteriously falls into the hands of nationally syndicated columnist Bob Novak, who then writes and an article exposing Ms. Plame as a CIA operative(in violation of federal law) intending to both damage her effectiveness and discredit her husband Joe Wilson.
7)Mr. Novak wrote this piece after Ambassador Wilson made public his own State Department sponsored investigation and subsequent exposure of forged documents alleging exportation of uranium yellow-cake from Niger to Iraq.
8)This exposure was much to the chagrin of the Bush administration whose Secratary of State had testified before the United Nations General Assembly, that such documents were incontrovertable evudence that Sadam Hussien was in possession of fissionable materials.
9)And Sadam Hussien's possession of such material and biological weapons plus his clear collaboration with Al Qeda posed a direct threat to the safety of all Americans as well as the Middle East. These, at the time, were the most widely broadcast reasons for the USA to attack Iraq.
10)After running his scam for two years, Gannon/Gucket, is finally exposed as a political operative, not by his fellow mainstream journalists, but by bloggers incensed by a single flippant partisan rhetorical question Gannon/Gucket posed to the president, during his first press conference this year.
Have I got this right? Because, if so:
11)This is unfreakinbelivable.
CCC
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=3957884948&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT
I'm not really a Bill Clinton fan, but imagine if you will that a guy connected to porn--GAY porn, mind you--was in any way connected to him, then imagine the shit storm that would be stirred up by the right-wingers like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, etc. Um, where is the "family values" crowd on this one?
Like I said, they're in the awkward position of defending the "right" of a fake reporter connected to gay porn sites who used a pseudonym to have White House press credentials. Wow, talk about lowering the bar, huh?
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2908
Think carefully, and then google "republican criminals" before you respond.
"I just had a thought on this one because of the flap on the YCT bit. Follow me here, if this Gannon guy is in the porn industry, it would seem unlikely that he is connected with the Republicans. My guess is that people connected with the porn industry, without any statistics on this, are unlikely to be associated with the political party working hardest against that industry."
Hey, Chris, I guess you haven't heard about the newest trend. It's C-R-A-Z-Y, man, and all the kids are talking about it.
It's called "hypocrisy" and anyone can get "into" it. What you do is SAY one thing but DO the opposite! Isn't that the wackiest thing you've ever heard of?
"My point was that a Republican would be unlikely to be a major player in the porn industry, especially the homosexual subset of the porn industry. It is more likely that this guy, Gannon, would be a Democrat or apolitical."
Well, he is definitely NOT apolitical. Check his website, jeffgannon.com.
Christopher, I think you're making a fundamental mistake here. The problem seems to be that you simply assume that the Republicans (I refer here to people high up in the party, not individual members) are sincere. Why do you make this assumption?
I've found that a lot of seeming inconsistancies (rhetoric versus behavior) can be easily reconciled if you simply stop assuming that a person is sincere in what they say.
Think about it for a moment: Many Republicans have won office recently on a platform that opposes gay marriage and abortion. The Republicans currently have a majority in both houses of Congress AND control a majority of state governorships and legislatures. The Democrats would have a hard, or impossible, time successfully opposing just about anything that the Republicans tried to get through Congress. Yet, despite this huge advantage, the Republicans haven't even attempted to INTRODUCE a bill opposing either of those things.
If the time to introduce legislation regarding things you have demonized as two of the greatest evils in American life isn't when you have control of government, when would it be?
Get my point? Basically, what I'm saying is that they care more about using these "evils" to "energize" their base than about actually *doing* anything about them. They are not sincere in their "opposition" to them.
Once you stop assuming sincerity on their part, suddenly the existance of a Jeff Gannon in their midst doesn't seem so hard to understand.
"If his unmasking wasn't deliberate, then it only shows that the Republicans didn't check very hard into his past. And if it was a Democrat that revealed his past, it is more likely that this is a Democratic dirty trick than a REpublican one."
No, what it shows is that they didn't CARE about his past, until it became a liability, that is.
Over this weekend, a major Republican strategist who helped, among others, Jesse Helms get elected announced that he married his BOYFRIEND in December. Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, is gay. Last year, a Republican Congressman who has stridently opposed gay rights, was caught advertising for sex on a gay website. Getting the picture yet?
You need to be more skeptical. Just because someone SAYS something, that doesn't mean that they are sincere. Often, people become fanatics in seeming to oppose that which they themselves are "guilty" of. It's called "distraction."
The Drudge Dude...
Why, Christopher, do YOU always assume that anything which goes against your selected political leanings HAS to be a dirty trick by the opposing party (or parties, as the case may be)?
"Why do you assume that Democrats don't have the political savy to pull a dirty trick?" - CC
Umm, nobody said that, Chris.
I said "pronographer".
😊
"Granted no one said that, but everyone keeps stopping at the curtain and I keep asking "what if there is a man behind the curtain?" and everyone says "there is no man behind the curtain because the trail ends at the curtain."
Oh, there most certainly IS a "man behind the curtain" and his name is Karl Rove.
"No, I do not assume that Republicans are always sincere, any more than Democrats are always sincere. I do assume that Republicans are no stupidier than the general population. And it would be stupid for a prominate producer/actor, or whatever this Gannon guy is, in the porn industry to believe he can successfully keep people from discovering it."
Clearing things up, he wasn't a "producer/actor." He was a guy who ran websites like hotmilitarystuds.com, etc. If you've been following the story closely, you'd see that he's a pretty arrogant asshole. He seems to be as much of an attention whore as he is a REGULAR whore.
"From what I understand, this Gannon guy had his website for only a short time before he got selected to get his press pass and ask "the question." That short time is more likely to be for a cover than a real belief system, unless you can show that he has held these beliefs he says he has for a long time before starting up the website."
Not exactly accurate. You might want to check out Americablog and dailykos.com for the details, but he had at least some of the websites up for at least several months prior to him asking "the question." Actually, "the question" is only relevant because it was what made people finally ask who he was. He was attending White House press briefings for two years at that point, on "daily passes" which are not normally given day in, day out to any other "reporter."
Oh, by the way, when he first started attending the briefings, Talon News, which he "reported" for didn't even exist yet. In other words, when he first became a White House "reporter," he had no one to "report" for! Good trick to get a White House press pass day in and day out when you don't even have an employer. No other "reporter" seems to have been able to do that.
"No one has shown me any reason to not suspect a political dirty trick. Republicans do them and Democracts do them."
Nor have you shown any evidence that it is anything other than what it appears to be: a self-hating gay man who aligns himself with the GOP for self-aggrandizement purposes and who fucked up by being too over-the-top.
"Why do you assume that Democrats don't have the political savy to pull a dirty trick?"
I don't, but you haven't shown anything resembling evidence that they perpetrated THIS particular dirty trick.
Seriously, go to Americablog and dailykos.com and see the extensive coverage they have given this story and the facts that they've uncovered. See if your opinion changes after reading that material.
If it was a dirty trick, it worked damn well. The Republicans are standing around with mud all over their faces. If it was for real, then this Gannon guy had to be stupid to think he could get away with popping the question like he did and get off scot free.
"All I wanted was consideration of the possibility that this could be a dirty trick. If it was, it was a good one. If this Gannon guy had been working this for two years before he got exposed as a fake, he probably wasn't a plant. Although the Soviets laid moles for longer periods for their stunts on occasion."
Yes, I promise you it's true that "Gannon" was getting into the White House for two years on what are *supposed* to be day passes. He's admitted that much. That makes it look certain that someone inside the House was letting him get in, which raises interesting questions.
"If it was a dirty trick, it worked damn well. The Republicans are standing around with mud all over their faces. If it was for real, then this Gannon guy had to be stupid to think he could get away with popping the question like he did and get off scot free."
I think you've basically answered your own question. He really does come off as an arrogant asshole. COULD the Democrats have set it up? Sure. DID they? Well, there's no evidence that they did and all the existing evidence suggests that they didn't.
As for it being "effective," was it really? Since the TV news is where most Americans get their information from and since TV news barely covered the story, most Americans have no idea who "Jeff Gannon" is, so I don't think that it had ANY effect, positive or negative, on the average person's opinion of the Republicans.